Efforts exist for investigating the generation of clouds of seedant particulates to detect and or neutralize or knockdown airborne agents of biological origin, such as Anthrax. The effectiveness of this technique is limited by the number of collisions between seedant particulates and the target particles.
The probability of collision between the particles in the atmosphere is so small that large quantities of seed particles may be required, making such concepts impractical. Target particles of a biological type are too large for Brownian motion to efficiently diffuse them, yet below the size where inertial impact routinely takes place with other particles due to turbulence found in the atmosphere. Thus, the seed particles and target particles will seldom come in contact with each other. Techniques are needed for overcoming this problem.